Growing Family
by BenRG
Summary: My first CL story.  Aelita's naievete leads to unexpected consequences after a conversation about families and children.  Based on a cartoon seen on DeviantArt  Season 2 AU JA
1. A Walk In The Park

**A Growing Family**

A Code: Lyoko Fanfiction by BenRG

**Disclaimer**

Code: Lyoko, and the canon characters, situations, technologies and events depicted therein are the property of Antefilms Productions and Moonscope.

The character of Anya Belhopper was created by Son-Neko (aka Kat) over on DeviantArt.

**Author's Notes**

This is a vicious, uncontrollable plot bunny that has come to life. After seeing a series of comic strips about some unanticipated consequences of Aelita's Season 2 naiveté, I feel compelled to tell the story of how a pair of 14-year-olds suddenly became parents to a 8-year-old girl.

Kat, I thank you for the inspiration and words of encouragement.

Remember that, at this point, everyone thinks that Aelita is an embodied AI computer program, including her. She thinks that she is a piece of software; she will therefore think in software terms when addressing problems of the physical world.

Continuity

This is set some time in Season 2 and rapidly goes hyper-AU. I will feel free to play heck with the established continuity of the show in any way that pleases me as this is a fanfic and that makes me **KING**, at least as far as this tiny corner of the fan-verse is concerned. :-p Just call me XANA to the canon and you will be fine.

**Censor: T - Just for safety's sake**

**Chapter 1 – A Walk In The Park**

Ulrich Stern was normally a very quiet, self-contained person who rarely admitted to emotions, a personal life or even a past history before his enrolment into Kadic Academy. Therefore, Andreas 'Odd' Della Robbia, his best friend, was most impressed at the grin that had formed on his quiet friend's face as he watched the latest member of what Odd personally thought of as 'The Lyoko Crew' dance through the grass and flowerbeds of Kadic Municipal Park.

Aelita Stones was laughing, her face radiant with a beaming smile as she tried to take in all the sights and sensations of Earth all at once. Most people who looked at the twirling pink-haired girl would just imagine that she enjoyed the peace and beauty of the park. Only the three boys accompanying her (and a currently absent girl) knew the real cause. Aelita was, in human terms, only a few weeks old, having previously only existed in an astonishingly complex computer-simulated world called 'Lyoko'. The elfin artificial intelligence had been an invaluable ally in their struggle against XANA, a computer virus that originated from Lyoko but seemed determined to destroy the world, and the four of them in particular.

From the start, Jeremie Belpois, the gang's resident genius and computer hacker, had been determined to free Aelita from her existence as a mere piece of AI software and give her a life in our world. Now, the shy blond boy was quietly watching the girl on whom he had a planet-sized crush as she took a kind of religious joy from the simple sensations that, after fourteen years, he had begun to take for granted.

"It's so beautiful!" Aelita gasped. "Even the Forest Zone is nothing like this! So much colour! So much life! Oh, I never imagined that your world could be like this!" Ulrich hoped that no one was listening too closely. Still, having visited all the zones of Lyoko, he had to agree that the park was a major improvement in environment. Suddenly, he noticed that Aelita had stopped her twirling progress. "Jeremie… what is that?" she asked, pointing hesitantly at something.

Jeremie looked up and smiled slightly. Aelita was looking at a blonde woman pushing a baby in a buggy along a path through the park. Aelita, whose previous experience with humanity was virtually nil, was startled at the sight of what appeared to be a slightly distorted miniature human.

"That's a baby, Aelita," Jeremie said with a slight smile, enjoying the girl's obvious amazement.

"A 'baby'," Aelita said quietly, tasting the word and trying to fix it, and the sight before her, in her memory.

"Yes," Jeremie said, instinctively going over to 'lecture' mode. "Humans do not just pop into existence fully mature, Aelita. We are born very small and nearly helpless, as babies, and slowly grow into adults. It takes us between eighteen and twenty-one years before society considers us sufficiently mature to look after ourselves."

"Although we _think_ we are ready a lot earlier, right Einstein?" Odd laughed. They all enjoyed the irony that five people, who the law saw as 'children' and unable to control their own destinies, were sole protectors of the world against a threat most adults did not even know existed.

Aelita frowned, puzzled at the amusement her three friends were clearly experiencing but deciding not to pursue it. Instead, she decided to follow her initial line of inquiry regarding the 'baby'. "If you are helpless when you first come on-line, then how do you survive?"

"We exist in social units called 'families', made up of usually two adults and a number of children," Jeremie explained. Aelita nodded seriously. "The adults are responsible for the care of the children and most of raising them to maturity."

"Which can be a lot more trouble than you might think. Right Odd?"

Odd rolled his eyes at Ulrich's tease. "Hey, Ulrich, _my _parents never punish me because of my grades!"

Ulrich grinned in a predatory fashion. This was an old taunt that they had exchanged for years. "That is because they're so laid back that I doubt they'd _care_ if you flunked all of your classes, Odd."

Odd took on a look of wounded dignity. "My parents' view of my well-being is more enlightened than a mere list of grades, Ulrich," he said in a pompous tone of voice.

"Maybe but at least my way, I get cool stuff when I _don't_ flunk!"

Odd paused and blinked in simulated surprise. "Hey, I never thought of that! Maybe having uptight parents is a blessing in disguise!" Both boys started laughing at that, long inured to their frustrations from their respective parents' eccentricities.

Jeremie was impressed by his ability to hold a straight face as Odd and Ulrich performed their Vaudeville routine. Aelita looked like the two of them had suddenly gone mad. "So…" the materialised AI said slowly, "if raising a child is so difficult and so fraught with ambiguities and problems… why would anyone do it?"

"Well, there _is_ the instinctive drive to perpetuate the species," Jeremie replied thoughtfully. "However, from what _my_ parents say, a child completes a family. Many pair-bonded couples choose not to have children but those who do find that it can be a cause for joy despite the stresses."

Ulrich and Odd both blushed as they unintentionally flashed on memories of good times with their respective families. Yeah, the good times usually outweighed the bad, no matter how frustrating the bad got.

Aelita noted these reactions with a slight smile, finally getting the idea. "I would like to have a family," she said at last.

Odd sauntered over to slap the girl on the shoulder. "No rush, Princess," he said with a grin. "Plenty of time to have fun before having to deal with the responsibility."

"Besides, _we're_ your family now," Ulrich said, surprising himself with the strength of his feelings on the subject.

Jeremie smiled in a surprisingly warm fashion for a normally reserved boy. "That is correct. One definition of 'family' is a group of individuals who live together and give each other support, direction and comfort as needed. I think that we certainly live up to that description."

"Yeah! A family!" Odd liked the sound of that, so he grabbed Ulrich and Aelita by the arms and used them to herd a blushing Jeremie into an impromptu group-hug.

Aelita also blushed furiously (wondering at the sensation all over again) but had enough presence of mind to ask the next question that logically arose from the topic at hand. "Jeremie, where do babies come from?" That killed the mood. Aelita observed the expressions of panic on her three friends' faces with some puzzlement and wondered what she had said wrong.

"Uh…" Odd said. That certainly beat Ulrich, whose mouth was opening and closing silently, making Aelita wonder if she needed to access his synthesiser settings to turn his voice back on.

"Perhaps… Perhaps you should discuss that with Yumi," Jeremie offered. "She is, after all, also female and would have a similar perspective on that question to you."

"Yeah, ask Yumi," Odd said with a fixed smile.

* * *

On the other side of the suburb of Kadic, Yumi Ishiyama, the fifth member of the Lyoko Crew, was sitting at her family dining table. Unlike the other four, the fifteen-year-old Japanese girl was a day student, commuting to and from the Academy for classes from her family home (the others all boarded at the Academy, as their homes were far distant or, in Aelita's case, in a completely different plane of existence). Yumi was eating a light lunch this Saturday with her mother and pesky kid brother, Hiroki. 

Suddenly, she felt a strange sensation, as if someone were discussing her without her permission or presence. The girl sneezed. Yumi's mother smiled at her. "If you were to wear clothes that didn't leave your belly exposed, you wouldn't get chills," she announced. Yumi blushed and automatically tried to pull her cut-off black tee shirt down to cover her waist. Simultaneously, she wondered what was going on.

* * *

After ingesting the late-day nutrients required to keep her human body operating normally, Aelita sat down in her recently-assigned dorm room to consider the day's events. 

Yumi had been kind enough to teach Aelita a simple utility called 'meditation' that allowed her to partially shut down her sensory inputs and commit all her processor cycles to properly organising the new data that she had acquired during the day and ensure that the correct new algorithms resulted. Right now, perched in a lotus position on her bed in her dorm room, she was considering the unsatisfactory outcome of her discussion with her friends on the matter of babies.

Jeremie, whose advice and opinions she trusted implicitly, had stated that the social grouping known as a 'family' was completed by the inclusion of 'babies', which grew into 'children' and, ultimately, into mature humans over a period of tens of solar orbital cycles. Ulrich, whose ability to communicate complex information was more suspect than Jeremie's but far less so than Odd's, had said that the grouping of five friends who defied XANA both on Lyoko and on Earth classified as a family, of sorts. This opinion was further bolstered by the fact that Jeremie agreed with it.

Logically, this implied that their social grouping was incomplete because there were no children for them to raise to maturity. When she had relayed this error to the others, all three had gone an interesting shade of red that she had learnt indicated an extreme emotional event of some kind. Odd had recovered first and had agreed with Aelita's assessment (which, now she had the chance to re-process the raw data, was probably a negative event). He had turned to Ulrich and had suggested that he and Yumi were in an ideal position to remedy this shortfall.

Ulrich had once again experienced an extreme emotional event. After several seconds of processor overload that had disabled his synthesiser subsystem, the brown-haired warrior had informed Odd that he and Yumi weren't 'like that'. Furthermore, they had not 'done anything like that' either. Aelita was confused and was about to ask Ulrich what patches and updates the samurai and geisha required in order to carry out this function. However, Odd pre-empted her by turning to Jeremie and informing her blond-haired counterpart that, as Ulrich and Yumi were unable to do so, he was certain that Aelita would be more than glad to assist Jeremie in rectifying this lack in their family grouping.

Aelita was overjoyed at the prospect of being able to perform such a key function in their group so soon after her materialisation and suggested to Jeremie that they should schedule time to do so immediately. Jeremie's resulting processor lock had Odd lying on the ground, nearly non-functional, laughing uncontrollably (Aelita knew that this was an automatic response to amusement, having done it a few times herself). Jeremie and Ulrich had glared at their purple-loving blond friend with sufficient anger that Odd should have been instantly de-virtualised.

Jeremie had told Aelita that the process of producing a child was far more complex than she appreciated and informed her that it would take several days to explain it to her in sufficient detail for her to understand the process and all its implications. Ulrich had congratulated his friend on his courage at volunteering for the task, however Aelita had noted that Jeremie had not actually done so.

Aelita opened her eyes and looked around her dorm room, waiting for her systems to return to operating norms. Jeremie was a busy person, of course. His primary concern at this time was to write the anti-virus algorithms that would free Aelita from her interconnection with XANA that meant any attempt to destroy it would kill her too. Aelita could understand that he had little time to dedicate to such a complex process as creating a child. Aelita smiled as she realised that she was in an ideal position to assist him by doing most of the work herself. Indeed, the first step in the process was smiling at her from the other side of the room.

The pink-haired girl stood and walked over to the cork notice board on the wall opposite her bed and looked at a hardcopy image that she had made during a computer science class just last week. They had been using an intriguing graphical manipulation tool called 'Photo Fusion' that allowed you to slowly 'morph' an image into a second image through several intermediate forms. The class had amused themselves by taking photographs of each other and then freezing the morphing process about halfway and printing out the resulting 'child'.

The terminology used in the class reminded Aelita of the limited information Jeremie and Ulrich had been able to give her about babies (in between attempting to strike a hysterically laughing Odd over the back of the head). They had told her that babies were the result of a blending of the essences of two existing humans, one male and one female. Aelita looked at the picture of the blending of the images of her and Jeremie thoughtfully. The result was a person with most of Jeremie's facial features (including his eyeglasses) but more feminine and with longer pink hair that displayed some of the untidy nature of Aelita's own hair.

Aelita took the photo-quality printout and smiled at the happy face on it. She was due to return to Lyoko for twelve hours tomorrow, which was convenient, as she would require the capabilities of the Supercomputer as accessible from a Tower to proceed with her plan. Until then, she would require further data on babies and children that she would be able to access from the Academy's databanks, a facility called the 'library'.

Aelita checked her watch and noted that curfew was almost upon her. Well, that would simply require her to evade the guardian known variously as 'Jim' (to almost everyone) and 'The Big Fat Clown' (to Odd). Thanks to several night-time adventures with her friends, she was confident that she would be able to deal with this without too much difficulty. After nearly a solar cycle's experience of avoiding Blocks, Tarantulas and other minions of XANA, it was unlikely that a lone human would be too much of a challenge.

to be continued...


	2. Congratulations! It's A Girl!

**A Growing Family**

A Code: Lyoko Fanfiction by BenRG

**Disclaimer**

Code: Lyoko, and the canon characters, situations, technologies and events depicted therein are the property of Antefilms Productions and Moonscope.

The character of Anya Belhopper was created by Son-Neko (aka Kat) over on DeviantArt.

**Author's Notes**

This is a vicious, uncontrollable plot bunny that has come to life. After seeing a series of comic strips about some unanticipated consequences of Aelita's Season 2 naiveté, I feel compelled to tell the story of how a pair of 14-year-olds suddenly became parents to a 8-year-old girl.

Kat, I thank you for the inspiration and words of encouragement.

Remember that, at this point, everyone thinks that Aelita is an embodied AI computer program, including her. She thinks that she is a piece of software; she will therefore think in software terms when addressing problems of the physical world.

Continuity

This is set some time in Season 2 and rapidly goes hyper-AU. I will feel free to play heck with the established continuity of the show in any way that pleases me as this is a fanfic and that makes me **KING**, at least as far as this tiny corner of the fan-verse is concerned. :-p Just call me XANA to the canon and you will be fine.

**Censor: T - Just for safety's sake**

**Chapter 2 – Congratulations! It's A Girl!**

Aelita and Jeremie were riding the elevator down into the heart of the abandoned factory, where the computer genius Franz Hopper had built the Supercomputer and had created Lyoko, the most incredible virtual world ever imagined. Both were preoccupied with their own thoughts, so the ride was carried out in silence.

Jeremie was thinking of his provisional anti-virus protocols and the simulations that he and Aelita were going to carry out to test them. However, he seriously doubted that he could have the necessary detachment to look upon these simulations as simple scientific experiments. As the weeks had turned into months, he had found his crush on the pink-haired girl getting stronger. They had been even doing something analogous to dating on free days and had recently starred in a special edition of the school newspaper, the _Kadic Herald_, when they shared their first public kiss. In his heart of hearts, Jeremie knew that he was developing a deep emotional bond with Aelita. Completing the anti-virus codes and therefore freeing her from Lyoko and XANA had become an absolute priority. It wasn't just because it was the right thing to do; it was because he loved her and wanted her free and with him.

Jeremie couldn't help but blush as Aelita shot him a mischievous and surprisingly sensual smile. _Mon dieu! Does she know what her smile does to me?_ he pondered.

Aelita enjoyed watching Jeremie blush. She had little experience with human emotions even now, five months into her existence as a human girl. However, she knew that she felt comfort, ease and security in Jeremie's presence that she felt nowhere else. Ulrich was right – they _were_ a family and Jeremie was the closest of her family to her by far. To see him so vulnerable to her, knowing her own vulnerability to him, was an intimacy that still defied all her attempts to process logically.

However, Aelita's own mind was focussed on what awaited them in the Supercomputer's operations and monitoring chamber below them. She couldn't help but laugh at the horribly incomplete data that had led her to begin this project. Oh, she had acquired more complete data soon enough. Yumi's mother had been a great source of information, as had Yumi herself, Nurse Yolande and even, surprisingly, Sissi Delmas. However, by the time she had realised how fatally flawed her initial chain of reasoning had been it was too late to turn back without confronting serious ethical implications.

The elevator reached the security lockout level and Jeremie reached for the keypad to enter the access code to continue down to the Supercomputer. Before he could do so, Aelita reached out and grabbed his hand. "Before we proceed, Jeremie, there is something that I need to tell you about." Jeremie looked at his… girlfriend? Yes, he had to face that. He looked at her questioningly. "Do you remember that silly conversation that you, I, Odd and Ulrich had in the park about three weeks after I was materialised?"

Jeremie nodded. "About babies? Yes, I do. I'm sorry that we weren't mature enough to talk to you about something so basic to our biology without acting like idiots."

Aelita giggled. "It's alright Jeremie. I understand the social implications now and I appreciate why something so bound up in emotional intimacy would embarrass you." She drew in a deep breath. "Unfortunately, I was a bit impatient… as always… and I did something with long-lasting consequences."

Jeremie took in the look of shame and embarrassment on Aelita's face and added two and two together. His imagination immediately leapt to images of innocent and ignorant experimentation and its consequences. "Aelita! You didn't! You…! You aren't… aren't… _pregnant_?!?"

"NO!" Aelita gasped out. "No, at least not…" she shook her head and cancelled what she was about to say. "No, I'm not, Jeremie. I wouldn't have had the slightest idea what it would have required then and I know the emotional content well enough not to _want_ to do it now." _At least not without you knowing about it_, she added silently.

"Then what are you talking about? What did you do?"

Aelita sucked in a breath before continuing. "Jeremie, the womb is not the only place from where a mind may be born," she said at last. "Remember that I did not have parents. Rather I am a piece of artificially intelligent software. I was not born, rather Dr. Franz Hopper _wrote_ me. What can be done once can be done again." Aelita stepped forward and took Jeremie's hands in her own. "While I was in Lyoko, I copied my intelligence and sentience algorithms and reverse-engineered them so I could create an AI program of my own. I then encoded it into a sprite that I synthesised based on a mixing of your and my virtual forms. Once I had a working AI, I spent most of the previous three months worth of Lyoko stays debugging… _its_… personality routines and fine-tuning its physical form. I decided that, as the most difficult period of raising a child was the earliest years, I would choose a level of mental and physical development that would allow a great deal of autonomy, whilst not making it so mature that the AI would be completely independent. I also didn't want it to be in the teen years, when I understand that hormonal changes cause considerable problems for parents."

Jeremie shook his head. "Aelita, I don't understand what you are saying. You're telling me that you created a new AI in Lyoko? One whose physical form was a blending of yours and mine? Why would you do that?"

Aelita laughed nervously. "Well… Ulrich did say that he and Yumi weren't able to produce a child yet; I was willing and, as Odd pointed out, we were the only available source unless he found a partner willing to participate." Jeremie's eyes bulged out of his sockets in a way Aelita found really quite impressive. "Remember this?" She handed him the photo-quality Photo Fusion printout, now carefully encased in plastic to keep it from discoloration or damage.

Jeremie wasn't considered the smartest boy at Kadic Academy without reason. Aelita had given him all the clues he needed. There was only one remaining barrier. He could not _believe _what he was hearing. "Oh, Aelita," he whispered. "Dear God, Aelita. God, Mother Mary, Jesus and all the Saints, _please_ tell me that you haven't done what I think you have done."

Aelita had tears in her eyes. "I can't, Jeremie," she said at last. "I can only show you." Aelita entered the security code and hit the red plunger switch that activated the elevator's winch motor. The elevator dropped the remaining distance and the huge armoured doors opened up on the main control room of the Supercomputer. The chamber was lit by florescent lights around its circular perimeter and by the blazing hologram of Lyoko suspended above the dome-like imager in its very centre. The control station with its four high-resolution LCD displays and comfortable chair was currently directly in between the holographic imager and the doors of the elevator.

Aelita reached out to grab Jeremie by the hand and pulled him out into the chamber. The operator's chair turned around and a small pink-topped figure launched itself towards Aelita with a squeal of welcome. "Mama!" Aelita dropped onto one knee and embraced the figure in dark brown dungarees and a pink tee shirt.

"Hello, Little One," she said, her voice tender. "I hope that you weren't lonely whilst I was away."

"No, Mama!" the little girl replied. "I've had lots of fun watching Lyoko from up here! All XANA's monsters are like teeny tiny dots!"

Aelita drew in a deep breath and looked up at Jeremie, who was utterly paralysed at the scene before him. "Jeremie," she said. "I want you to meet Anya; our daughter."

Jeremie looked down at the face looking up at him from Aelita's arms. It was, beyond any doubt, the face that looked back at him from the mirrors in the bathrooms every morning, right down to the eyeglasses for myopia. But there was also the undoubted influence of Aelita too. The pink hair for one thing, but more subtly the softer lines of a feminine face and those leaf-green eyes that threatened to hypnotise him some days. "Hi Papa!" Anya said and stuck a hand out to Jeremie. On autopilot, Jeremie extended a hand for the little girl, who could only be eight years old, to grab and shake. "Pleased to meet you!" Anya chirped.

"Likewise," Jeremie said, barely able to think about what was happening. Finally, his brain went back into drive. "Er… Anya?" He looked into the little girl's bright, intelligent eyes and managed a smile. "Anya, your… er… _mother_ and I need to talk about something in private. Could you, uh…?"

As soon as Anya was back on the operator's chair and staring at the displays again, he turned to Aelita. Jeremie walked right up to the pink-haired girl, getting into her space and making her back up a little in instinctive fear. "Aelita… you… you didn't?"

Aelita managed a slightly embarrassed smile and rubbed the back of her head nervously. "At the time it seemed an elegant solution to a potentially damaging logistical and scheduling problem," she said quietly. Jeremie's expression showed that he wasn't impressed by that explanation. "By the time I had enough data to understand how bad my initial assumptions were, I could fool myself that it was just a harmless hobby to spend the hours I had to spend on Lyoko. When the time came to materialise her… well, by then it was too late to turn back."

"Too late?" Jeremie blurted.

Aelita nodded and smiled. "Jeremie, we will have to keep her."

"Keep her?" Jeremie parroted in horror. "Aelita, we cannot do this! This is a gigantic mistake that we need to rectify _right now_!"

Jeremie immediately realised that he had made a serious error of judgement. Aelita's eyes narrowed and darkened in fury. "A mistake? Perhaps you would like me to revirtualise her and delete her file? And while you are at it, why don't you do the same thing to me? Delete me and there would be nothing to hold you back! You could shut down the Supercomputer and destroy XANA once and for all!"

"Aelita, there is no comparison!" Jeremie protested. "You are a sentient being! Just deleting your file because it would make my life easier would be murder! I… I wouldn't ever be able to forgive myself!" That latter part was added in a very weak, pained tone of voice.

"I feel the same way about her," Aelita said firmly. "There is no difference Jeremie."

"There is a world of difference!" Jeremie protested, his voice rising in frustration. "You are a fully realised life form for all you are software-based. Anya…"

Aelita cut him off, her voice even louder. "Anya is as much a life form as I am, Jeremie. She is completely sentient. She has an '_I am_'. She is a complete and fully realised individual! Deleting her would be killing a living person. There is a bit of you and me in her and destroying that… Deleting me would be a mercy after that. I would have become worse than XANA, creating life just to destroy it for my own convenience." Anya looked around the chair, worried at her parents' raised voices. Aelita managed to shoot her a reassuring smile that _didn't _look like a grimace. Not wanting to alarm the intelligent younger girl, she continued her argument in a softer tone of voice. "Jeremie, by the time I realised what I had done, Anya was fully functional. I couldn't turn back then. I couldn't take the life that I had made and delete it without killing a bit of my own… what is that thing that you say underlies your physical nature…? Oh yes, I would be killing a bit of my own _soul_."

There was a long, stunned silence as Jeremie absorbed Aelita's passionate defence of Anya's status as a life form and a sentient being with rights. Finally, he spoke the real fears in his heart. "Aelita, you don't understand," he protested. "This isn't like adopting a stray cat or dog. Anya is a human being. She will require schooling, a life and people to provide for her. She will need a home… she will need _parents _to raise and guide her. We're only children, Aelita. We can't do that for her! We cannot do this, _period_! I'm sorry."

Aelita looked down. "I'm sorry too," she said. "Jeremie, I won't let you hurt her. I understand all the things that Anya needs and I am willing to do what it takes to give her those things. If I have to do that alone, then I will. I was hoping…" There was a long pause before Aelita looked up again. "I hoped that we were a family; You, I, Odd, Ulrich and Yumi. We have defied XANA and saved both Lyoko and Earth so many times. We have done what is called 'impossible' on a weekly basis. If any family can face this challenge it is we five… we _six_."

"Mama, Papa, is anything wrong?" Anya had walked over with the usual casual insubordination of the young. She was clearly trying to understand the argument being played out before her.

"Nothing is wrong, Anya, please don't worry," Aelita said with as reassuring a smile as she could manage in the circumstances.

Jeremie looked into that face, into _Aelita's eyes_ looking out of a facsimile of _his own features_, and felt instincts that he had never known before stirring within him. Try as he might, he could not break his gaze from this little girl's face. No matter how much he tried to tell himself that this was just a mistakenly activated AI program in an artificial human body created by his girlfriend to amuse herself, he could only see an eight-year-old girl who was now very much at his mercy.

Aelita looked back at Jeremie and took in his conflicted expression. "We can do this, Jeremie," she said. "I know we can. I believe in you, we both do." Aelita stepped towards her boyfriend and smiled hopefully. "Please, Jere." Aelita leant forward and kissed Jeremie on the cheek. Anya giggled and covered her eyes. Jeremie blushed like a warning beacon.

"I… I need to start on forging her statutory documentation," he said weakly. _Jeremie Belpois, you are a weak-minded fool_, he added silently. Of course, in his heart, he knew that there was no choice. The moment that he had seen Anya he had been committed. He couldn't even find it in him to be angry with Aelita for doing this without his permission. After all, she had thought that she had been _helping _him. Anyway, this whole mess could have been avoided if he had just _sucked it up_ and told her where babies come from. "Just… just tell me before you implement any more ideas on how to help me, okay?"

"I will," Aelita promised. "Thank you, Jeremie."

"Are you two done being mushy yet?" Anya asked, still covering her eyes.

to be continued...


	3. Meet The Family

**A Growing Family**

A Code: Lyoko Fanfiction by BenRG

**Disclaimer**

Code: Lyoko, and the canon characters, situations, technologies and events depicted therein are the property of Antefilms Productions and Moonscope.

The character of Anya Belhopper was created by Son-Neko (aka Kat) over on DeviantArt.

**Author's Notes**

This is a vicious, uncontrollable plot bunny that has come to life. After seeing a series of comic strips about some unanticipated consequences of Aelita's Season 2 naiveté, I feel compelled to tell the story of how a pair of 14-year-olds suddenly became parents to a 8-year-old girl.

Kat, I thank you for the inspiration and words of encouragement.

Remember that, at this point, everyone thinks that Aelita is an embodied AI computer program, including her. She thinks that she is a piece of software; she will therefore think in software terms when addressing problems of the physical world.

Continuity

This is set some time in Season 2 and rapidly goes hyper-AU. I will feel free to play heck with the established continuity of the show in any way that pleases me as this is a fanfic and that makes me **KING**, at least as far as this tiny corner of the fan-verse is concerned. :-p Just call me XANA to the canon and you will be fine.

**Censor: T - Just for safety's sake**

**Chapter 3 – Meet the Family**

Anya looked around at the woods surrounding the manhole, her pretty face reflecting wonder that Aelita bet would have been seen on her face just five months ago. "Mama! It's like the Forest Zone but…!" the little girl murmured.

"But it is truly alive, I know Little One," Aelita said with a smile, keeping a firm grip on the child's hand. "Where are they going to meet us Jeremie?"

"By Ulrich's tree." Aelita nodded. Everyone knew the tree where the often-haunted brown-haired warrior often went to meditate when his personal ghosts became too powerful. More than once Aelita had been responsible for discreetly watching over Ulrich as the boy had struggled to hold in strange sounds of pain. Right now, the tree was a useful meeting spot.

"Hey! There they are! Einstein! Princess! Over here! Hey! Who's that? Does the Princess have a kid sister or something?" Odd could easily get a job as a warning siren, his voice was so loud.

Ulrich and Yumi turned around to look at Jeremie, Aelita and their… companion. Yumi's delicate dark eyebrows drew together in confusion and Ulrich's eyebrows shot towards his hairline. Aelita gulped. Jeremie shot her a cynical look. "Why should I deprive you of the pleasure?" he muttered. Aelita glowered at her boyfriend and started listing in her head methods of revenge in order of sadism and permanent physical disfigurement.

"So… Who's the kid?" Ulrich asked in his usual quiet, measured tone of voice.

"I'm not a kid, I'm Anya," Anya replied, outraged at being reduced to an impersonal noun.

Anya's response, earning a grin from Yumi and a nudge in the ribs for Ulrich from Odd, also spurred Aelita into action. "Ah, yes. This is, as you have already heard, Anya, Anya Belhopper." Not the most brilliant surname available, but Aelita thought it was good for a spur-of-the-moment decision. Use either 'Stones' or 'Belpois' and they would have to deal with explaining how they suddenly got a younger sibling that had never been mentioned before. "Anya is another AI from Lyoko; I was able to materialise her this morning and…"

"Hey, I know you three!" Anya's loud and sweet voice overrode Aelita's explanation. "You're my uncle Ulrich, you're my auntie Yumi…. Gee! You look so different without all that white stuff on your face! And you're my funny uncle Odd! Where's your tail?"

Jeremie decided that death would, at this point, be a mercy. Someone once warned him that children younger than 10 years old had no real concept of tact and Anya was proving it right now. Odd, Ulrich and Yumi were looking at each other in confusion. A strange smirk slowly appeared on Odd's face as he thought about Anya's comments about their appearance. "Well," Ulrich said with a suspicious twitch at the corner of his mouth, "I guess that confirms that she's from Lyoko."

"So, where did she come from Einstein?" Odd asked. "How did you find her?"

"Well, that isn't really important, Odd," Jeremie responded. "Suffice to say that I guarantee that she isn't a plant or a trap set by XANA."

"I found her," Aelita said, stretching the truth slightly. "I've spent all my time on Lyoko for the last few months preparing her to come to Earth."

"And telling me all about your cool adventures!" Anya added excitedly. "The next time you go to chase XANA off, can I come and watch? Huh? Can I?"

"I'm getting flashbacks to Hiroki," Yumi said with a slight giggle.

"Absolutely not!" Jeremie said, glaring at Anya. "Lyoko is a dangerous environment during combat operations. If you are anywhere near the Supercomputer, young lady, you will stay in the operations chamber with me."

"Aw!" Anya stuck her bottom lip out at Jeremie. His heart lurched; Aelita always got her way when she did that.

"Don't try that, Anya," Jeremie snapped. "This is for your own safety."

"Okay, Papa," Anya sighed in a tone of martyrdom.

Aelita winced and hoped that the others would miss her daughter's hideous _faux pas_. "Anyway, Jeremie has created a false identity for her. As you know, I am supposed to be Odd's second cousin on his mother's side. Anya's cover story is that she is an orphan to whom my alleged parents recently became foster carers. She is being enrolled in Kadic's new elementary school. That way, Jeremie can intercept any queries and communications about her using the same fake voicemail boxes and email accounts that he uses for me."

Ulrich nodded. "That's a good idea. She'll be in the younger kids' dorms on the floor below ours, so we can keep an eye on her. As she is Aelita's 'kid sister' it will be easy for us to get to her when needed."

"I did try to cover all the bases, Ulrich," Jeremie said in a tone of injured professional dignity.

Yumi had dropped onto one knee in front of Anya. The little girl and the young Japanese woman were looking at each other in an assessing fashion. "You are pretty," Anya said at last. "But you'd look a lot better in something other than black." Jeremie and Aelita winced in unison.

Somehow, Yumi managed to reign in her irritation, reminding herself that the child was new to Earth and had to be forgiven for the occasional lapse. "I've found that black suits me in a lot of ways, Anya," she replied. "It's more than a fashion statement, it's a way of… life…" Yumi frowned and glared at a pair of sparkling green eyes. "You're teasing me, aren't you?"

Anya giggled and grinned unrepentantly. "Of course. It's fun to watch older kids 'try not to upset the little one'."

Odd grinned. "Li'l Princess, you and I are going to get along just fine!" The blond boy suddenly cocked his head in thought. "You know, now that I look at her, she reminds me of someone."

"Well, we ought to get to the Principal's office today," Jeremie began but Odd interrupted him before he could continue.

"She looks just like you, Einstein. She's got the Princess' eyes and hair, but her face… It's you!" Yumi frowned at Odd's pronouncement and began to shift her gaze between Anya, Jeremie and Aelita. She gasped as she realised that the goofy blond was _right_.

"She called you 'Papa', Jeremie," Ulrich said into the sudden silence. "Is… there something that you two feel that you ought to tell us?"

Odd didn't wait for a reply. He practically leapt across the distance separating him from Jeremie and pounded the other boy on the back. "Einstein, you little Casanova you! You work _so_ fast! So, tell me your secret! Is it the small talk? Is it the smile? No, let me guess, it's the size of your RAM cache!"

Jeremie staggered, adjusted his glasses and turned to his hyperactive friend. "Odd, you incredible buffoon! It's nothing like that!"

Odd sneered good-naturedly. "Einstein, little girls don't grow on trees. If they did, the likes of me would be investing in orchards!"

Yumi had stood up and took the opportunity (always welcome) to slap Odd upside the head. "Odd-_baka_! Let them explain before you ask more questions!" Yumi stopped and looked down at Anya. Much to her surprise and discomfort, Anya had taken her hand and was looking up at her, her expression combining several aspects of trust and hero-worship.

Aelita leapt into the gap to offer an explanation. "Odd is right in some ways but wrong in others. Anya wasn't conceived biologically. We would have been only six years old and that would have been impossible. She is an AI, based on my higher functions but with a body that I designed based on a fusion of my and Jeremie's virtual forms."

Ulrich processed this. "Wait a minute. _You_ designed?"

Aelita grinned in an embarrassed way, rubbing the back of her neck. "I took that conversation we had a few months ago about babies a bit too seriously, I guess," she admitted. Jeremie later swore that great sweatdrops appeared beside the heads of all the others.

Yumi looked from Jeremie, to Aelita and then back to Anya. She looked down at the little girl who looked back up boldly and with a genuinely friendly smile. Yumi couldn't help but smile back. "Once you get over the shock, it's cool in a way," she said at last.

"Thanks Auntie Yumi," Anya said.

"That's 'Yumi-_Onee-chan_'," Yumi corrected quietly.

Ulrich sighed. "I can think of a thousand ways that this could go horribly wrong. What the _hell_ were you thinking Aelita?"

Aelita sighed. "I was operating under the impression that we were a family and that families were sometimes incomplete when there were no young children part of them." Both Ulrich and Jeremie went a bit red when they realised their own words were being thrown back in their faces. Yumi noticed this and made a mental note to get Ulrich to explain what happened later. "By the time that I realised that I was misunderstanding a lot of things, it was too late to turn back."

"Are you sorry that you wrote me, Mama?" Anya asked quietly.

Aelita stepped over to Anya and stroked the back of her hand along the little girl's cheek. "Never, Little One. My mistakes are my own but you are a blessing, no matter how you came to be with us."

"So," Ulrich said. "What happens now?"

"Anya is completely free of XANA's influence," Jeremie announced. "That means that she never has to return to Lyoko. Like Aelita, her body will mature and age just like any other human's. She will grow up, live her life and be happy." He looked at his watch. "That will include schooling. We have an appointment with Principal Delmas that we need to keep."

"That's my cue," Aelita said. "As you are my 'foster baby sister', after all." Anya giggled at that thought but Aelita knew that the little girl was smart enough to play her part in this charade.

"Mama, do I _have_ to go to school? It sounds boring!"

* * *

"There goes a kid after my own heart," Odd said as Aelita towed Anya off towards the grounds of Kadic Academy. "You know, I've long wanted an apprentice in the ways of Odd-ness. Maybe the wait is at last over!"

"Odd Della Robbia." Odd looked at Jeremie, hearing the cold tone of his voice. "If I see, hear or even just encounter a rumour of you influencing my daughter to be a slacker and a prankster… Well, there are things that I can do that you don't want to know about. Maybe I'll just 'lose' your pattern between Lyoko and the Scanner some time."

"You wouldn't do that, would you Einstein?" Odd asked nervously.

"As far as you know? Yes." Jeremie smiled at Odd in a dangerous fashion before turning and walking off towards the Academy.

"Jeremie an over-protective dad!" Odd muttered. "Who would have thought it?"

"I've still got a bad feeling about this," Ulrich growled.

"Me too," Yumi added. "She is really vulnerable to an attack by XANA. On the flip side though, I've got a feeling that raising Anya is going to be a lot of fun." She grinned. "Aelita and I are going to enjoy having a little girl to fuss over!"

Odd looked at Ulrich significantly, his cynical expression making the German boy roll his eyes. He was used to girls getting… well, 'girlie' about such things. Suddenly, Odd spoke up. "Ulrich, I've just realised something."

"What?"

"We aren't a majority anymore." He saw Ulrich's lack of comprehension. "From now on, there are as many boys as girls in our little club. And two of them know how to twist Jeremie around their little finger already. That means we're outnumbered!"

Ulrich snorted. He would never tell Odd that, if Yumi tried, she could probably convince him to dance in the Great Hall in a pink tutu. "Interesting times indeed," was all he said.

**The End**


End file.
